BREATHING

By Atsuo Hiruma Sensei

He answered that he still did not truly know the meaning of the word, even considering
the enormous experience of my master within the Karate world. I furthermore questioned him
on irimi, and when I formulated the question, he answered in a very strong way, indicating
that I should not use the word irimi so easily, that word, he said, has a very important
meaning.

Irimi and Ki are energy itself, hard to understand and even more to attain, but
never impossible, that is what Master Egami dedicated his life to search for, deepening
in the understanding of them both. He started his research after
having hurt his body due to a series of circumstances, among them overtraining which he
submitted himself to when he was named instructor of the Armed Forces during the 2nd WW
and maybe together with a mistaken training method during his youth. He always emphasized this when he
told us to take our bodies to the limit during our training, we should always be conscious
of the meaning of our search: not to become stronger physically, not to develop our bodies,
because if this was the goal, the only thing we would attain would be the separation
of body and mind within our training and in time we would only end up hurting our bodies.

We know that at the center of the Earth there is a nucleus of energy or magma that has enormous
force, without this energy the Earth would not live, that would also happen to us if we didn't
possess the latent energy within us.

When this energy or magma is at rest, nothing happens, but when there is an excess energy
it will tend to liberate itself from the source through the weakest point and this
is visible when a volcano erupts. A vital point exists within ourselves, a center where energy
enters and exits, we will call it tanden. The tanden is not a technical term from
a medical or psychology dictionary, it is simply the vital center that living beings possess
where energy accumulates. From it energy irradiates to other parts of our body. If the
tanden isn't alive, neither will we and it will be death that replaces life.

Earth, as the source of life is constantly irradiating energy, sometimes in an uncontrolled fashion
as I have just mentioned and mostly in a controlled way. We have to use this energy, trying to
absorb it with our body and our mind (Kimochi). We not only receive energy from the Earth
but also from the air that surrounds us. I sometimes mention the word kimochi many
times during
a training session and my students interpret it in an erroneous way, you do what I wish you shall
do, but you do not do it as I would wish you would. You have to notice that when you do things,
you are conscious of your acts and this is the mistake. You are blocking the energy you are
receiving from the air around you and the earth beneath you. You must abandon yourselves and
let that which the earth and air is giving you follow its natural cycle, going through your
legs and arms and accumulating in your tanden and then irradiating through your organism.

Our training must consist in feeling this energy accumulating in our vital center and then
being able to control it.

We will first do this in seiza (photo 1), trying to get our bodies to flatten out on
the ground, we must feel the energy that the earth offers us. In this position the body's
union with the earth must be complete, in a state of total acceptance of that which the earth
is offering us.

After seiza, we do the exercise in hachiji dachi (photo 2), we try to localize the
tanden. To do this, we mentally try to divide the body in two, from the waist up and the
waist down, then we try to root ourselves more, towards the earth and then our body will
talk and will clearly indicate our vital center.

Once this is done, the only thing left to do is through the breathing process, absorb the energy
the earth is giving us. You can observe that people when they breath through the mouth or
nose, they bring the air into the lungs and expulse it once again and nothing more. We
through hachiji dachi will try, once we are well rooted to the earth and the air, to
channalize the energy that these elements offer and accumulate them in the tanden, from
there, through our breathing we will slowly raise it toward the top of our heads and
pausing there, we will let it fall rapidly to the tanden where it will once again return
to the earth from where it came. We will be united with the earth through a mutual acceptance
and our vital center generates the necessary reaction to produce
any movement and project all energy to the point one wish to reach.

It is important that you observe and feel through your training the breathing movements
that have been indicated, as something natural, as natural as walking, because our
life revolves around our breathing and to do this in an erroneous way means we are only
in life; for us to feel this life, to find the answer of many of our doubts and for us to work
along the path Master Egami showed us, it is necessary to be in contact with the energy
the elements such as the earth and air have to offer us and this will be the highest goal
of the Martial Arts and our training within Shotokai.